A comment on a recent issue in the modding community
Hi folks,
While I was on leave, a situation arose in the unofficial modding community, which caused some confusion and prompted a number of comments asking what our position is on this.
What are official vs. unofficial mods
These days, TaleSpire has official support for adding creatures and some level of functionality via Symbiotes. However, these are relatively recent additions.
Since the early days of the TaleSpire Early Access, there has been a cadre of folks using dll injection and other fun techniques to bolt unofficial extras onto the game.
This is fine by us. Building the things we want, the way we want, takes time. So the fact that people can add things we haven’t or won’t is grand.
The understanding, of course, is that they are operating in an active building site, and so the shape of the codebase can and will change under their feet. This is just par for the course in the modding world.
Our relationship with the unofficial modding community
This has worked well.
Early on, we worked together to add a flag that prevented errors from mods from being reported to our server. This saved us from chasing bugs that weren’t our fault.
From our side, we started running Betas before launching big features. This was explicitly in an effort to break less of the unofficial mods. The idea is that the unofficial modding community has a chance to find mods that may be broken and a little time to fix them before the features ship to the public.
We don’t always see eye to eye on priorities, but that’s natural. The core of our team got their start in game development by modding Neverwinter Nights, so modding is our history, and it’s something we value.
What happened in this case
The short version is that a modder decided to add a plugin that shows a UI claiming to be wiping the user’s hard drive.
They then added this plugin (which they titled a “social experiment”) as a dependency to another mod of theirs that was already broken.
This meant that when regular players who use any of the thirty-eight affected mods pulled the latest updates, they would fall victim to this “jape.”
EDIT 2024-08-09: We have received feedback explaining that the Thunderstore count of 38 included mods that used to have a dependency on the mod as well as ones that still do. While we are not aware of a way to check what the count was at the time, we are comfortable saying it was less than 38. A quick check at the time of writing this update shows only around 20 mods listing the plugin in question as a dependency. Whatever the count was, it was enough to cause the provoking issue, and we stand by our desire to correct any way we contributed to the confusion.
After this incident kicked off, the modder switched the plugin so it no longer shows a fake erasing of the hard-drive, but instead criticizes the user.
What is our position on it?
It is a frustrating thing to see. This is not how we’d like any players to be treated. Whether they are a member of our community or not.
It achieved nothing of use while simultaneously wasting the time of the people it confused and those who came to support them.
It all seems deeply unnecessary.
What next?
We remain staunch supporters of people’s right to modify their games.
We are not going to disallow or disincentivize it just because of the (in our opinion) tactless and short-sighted actions of one person.
If people choose to use unofficial mods, they are still free to, but they should be informed about the risks involved.
With that said, innocent parties got tricked and came to us thinking TaleSpire was doing something to their machine.
This makes TaleSpire look bad and the community unsafe.
Our feeling is that we need to do a better job of publicly delineating the boundary between the officially supported mods and the unofficial ones. People can only make informed choices if they are informed.
To that end, we are going to do the following:
Clarify Terminology
Anywhere in the game where we use the term “mod” when referring to “officially supported modded stuff,” we will instead be using the term “community content.”
This has been on the roadmap for a while and is just a much better name for content like music (which is something you’ll be able to add in the future).
With this change, we can use “modding” for the unofficial stuff, and all the other community content is… well… community content!
For the sake of consistency, I’ll still use the more unwieldy phrase “unofficial mods” for the remainder of this post.
Add UI to indicate the use of unofficial mods
We could do a better job at this, so we will.
Of course, mods can mess with any of the game’s code, so they could remove any UI we add. But we’ve collaborated with modders on things like this before, and we will endeavor to do the same with this, too.
Move discussions and support of unofficial mods to the sites and servers of their respective communities
In the past, we had a private board on Discord for unofficial modders. This didn’t work so well, as it just meant there were semi-clandestine discussions about joining that board.
In the time since that board atrophied, we’ve seen discussions about unofficial mods all around the official TaleSpire Discord. This has been very convenient but has contributed to the confusion we’ve seen with less technical users about what is and isn’t supported by us.
Our position going forward is that unofficial modding is softly off-topic for the official Discord server.
We aren’t gonna be out here waving the ban hammer or anything, but we will be encouraging folks to take the chat and support issues to the respective servers of the mod’s creators.
As with our previous iterations, we'll keep an eye on what's working and what isn't and adjust accordingly.
Coda
We hope these tweaks to our approach will help going forward and that this post clarifies some of what happened.
You can reach out to us on Discord or support@bouncyrock.com if you have any feedback.
As always, we hope this finds you well.
Happy adventuring!
baldrax
baldrax
·and I do believe that the wording of Community content, verses
modding has been confusing up until this point, this is a
step in the right direction IMO.
Any time you download software, of any kind, you put yourself at risk.
I do believe that the current mods and creators of those mods, up to now, intend no real harm to anyone, but that is a risk.
I, myself, author a toolset that could do anything I want on a users system. I do not take that lightly. I do my best, whether the user is aware or not, to protect them and their data. But if one intended, they could do harm.
I could also expose someone to harm unintentionally and if that happened I would be forever regretful. But we do not know what we do not know.
I guess the message is, learn as much as you can about the software you are downloading, no matter what the source.
Be informed, be safe. And most of all, have fun.
thelordashes
Userthelordashes
User ·The "Social Experiment Plugin" started as a test to see how many people just download a ton of plugins without knowing what they do and then, when half of them don't work because they are clearly marked as broken since some BR update, they demand support and want fixes, wasting the community's time. The "Social Experiment Plugin" had clear indication "Do not download me".
When STAT MESSAGING plugin was officially made OBSOLETE (it was being phased out long before Taleweaver, was made obsolete since the Taleweaver update, but marked officially obsolete later) it was marked as OBSOLETE in many different ways (Status Plugin post, Docs, Taleweaver Page, Taleweaver Icon, R2ModMan Description, R2ModMan Icon, Logs). Since use of the DEAD STAT MESSAGING plugin, despite the instructions not to use, would cause Talespire to run at a hobble and cause other plugins to stop working (because it was constantly generating exceptions which was eating CPU), measures needed to be taken to ensure that users did not run with this DEAD PLUGIN because that would just get a ton of complaints about Talepsire. As such the "Social Experiment Plugin" was added to this DEAD PLUGIN as a dependency because it did prevent
Talespire from being run in crippled mode.
It should be noted that a condition of the server rules for this community discord server is that users verify the pinned messages which in turn indicated to always check the status of plugins prior to a session because plugins can stop working at any time due to BR updates.
As such the only users that were affected by the Hard Drive prank are those that violated the community server rules, ignored all of the indications that a plugin should not be used, and decided to run it anyway against the instructions of the creator. Any user that was following the server rules, would have seen the notice that the plugin was not to be used, would have removed it, and thus would never have seen this prank.
As such the statement of "This meant that when regular players who use any of the thirty-eight affected mods pulled the latest updates, they would fall victim to this 'jape'" is completely a lie on multiple levels.
1. Only the DEAD PLUGIN (STAT MESSAGING) has the "Social Experiment Plugin" as a dependency and the DEAD PLUGIN (STAT MESSAGING) is not a dependency for any working plugin. I have no idea where this supposed 38 number comes from but it is totally a fabrication.
Note: There may be some ancient plugin that still use Stat Messaging but those plugins would be missing Taleweaver and Seats updates which means they would not be functional anyway.
2. Users are not getting this message because they are adding Lord Ashes plugins, they are getting it because they are not removing Lord Ashes' plugin which have been identified as Obsolete in multiple ways and in the process they are violating the discord server rules.
There are two types of modders. Those that create mods and then don't support them. When their mods don't work and potentially cause problems, they let the users figure it out on their own. This causes users to run back to the community asking a lot of questions. I am even fielding support question for such mods because the original mod creator doesn't provide any support to his/her broken plugins. The alternative is to have the mods try to detect inappropriate use of the mod and tell the users, in a humorous way, that they have violated the terms and conditions of the community. This is the path I chose because it makes it quite obvious to the users that they screwed up.
thelordashes
Userthelordashes
User ·However, I don't want to complicate things for the loyal users that can follow instructions, can observer when multiple indicators say to not use a plugin, and have a sense of humor, so I will be adding the Lord Ashes License Agreement to my plugin. It will be a one time acceptance of terms & conditions whose acceptance will be necessary to run any Lord Ashes plugins. Once you accept the terms you will be able to run any of Lord Ashes plugin (unless a specific plugin dictates otherwise). These conditions will clearly indicate what you can expect to find in Lord Ashes plugins. User will then have the knowledge to either accept my style or not. The educated choice will be their. If the user does not agree to the terms, all Lord Ashes plugin will be disabled at runtime.
demongund
demongund
·Sometimes the problem IS you.
I particularly like the idea of your plugins being removed and iron curtain of your reign being lifted.
thelordashes
Userthelordashes
User ·Users installed my plugins of their own free will, misused them, and got slapped on the wrist for it. When you install any software, you willingly place yourself at the mercy of the software developer. Period. I have done my due diligence in trying to prevent users from using plugins that are dead and will bake their system but if user choose to disregard the rules of the community server, ignore the multiple signs saying not to do something, and do it anyway then that is on them - not me.
If you have an issue with this, it is a simple matter to remove my plugins. No one is forcing you to use them. There is no iron curtain of reign because the users have all the power. I can't make you install or remove plugins.
Remove my plugins, write you own, problem solved. :D
What have you done for the Talespire Modding Community besides contribute to these verbal spats? I'm trying to find your plugins on Thunderstore but I don't see them. ;-)
thelordashes
Userthelordashes
User ·I believe someone did a quick check to see how many plugins use STAT MESSAGING which shows as 38 plugins on Thunderstore.
However, what the researcher did not notice is:
1. Eight of those plugins aren't mine. Some of those aren't even plugins they are mega packs that users have created. I have no control over those beyond marking a plugin as dead in 6 or so ways.
2. The list looks at all versions of the plugin. Yes, many plugins used to use STAT MESSAGING in the past but no plugin has used STAT MESSAGING since the Taleweaver update. No currently working plugins use it. So unless the user is running a mega pack created by others (which I have not control over) or the user has pre-Taleweaver plugins (which would not work anyways) then they would not need STAT MESSAGING.
CULTxicycalm
UserCULTxicycalm
User ·